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09/04/2018

Telecoms boss Malone predicts Google will be undone by abuses of digital search market

The Irish telecoms and media billionaire John Malone has predicted Google will be broken up by competition watchdogs to curb its dominance online.

Malone, chairman of European cable giant Liberty Global, which owns Virgin Media, the broadcaster Discovery, travel website TripAdvisor and Hollywood studio Lionsgate, said Google would in future not be allowed to offer other services on top of its monopoly on web search.

"In my opinion, Google will be broken up and will not be allowed to go vertical on services, anything in which they control the search algorithm and figure out - presenting it to the consumer," he said.

The 77-year-old made the forecast at a private event for Virgin Media staff in Dublin in July. British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph obtained a transcript of his comments.

Mr Malone said Google's ability to use its search engine to steer web traffic away from rivals in neighbouring digital markets would be its undoing.

Google denies such behaviour, but was last year found by European watchdogs to have abused its dominance of search to crush its competition in shopping comparison and was fined more than €2.4bn.

"We own a company called TripAdvisor. When you go on a mobile site, you might get two or three results of a search," said Mr Malone.

"For a company that is quite dependent on getting its traffic from search, when Google decides they're going to change their algorithm... game over.

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